Hand tools for harvesting prickly pear fruits

The development process for two hand tools to harvest prickly pear fruits is discussed. One of these tools harvests the fruit by twisting them around their longitudinal axis, while the other one cuts a small piece of the pad at the base of the fruits. The dimensions of such designs are based on the distribution of sizes and cutting forces for the small and large varieties of prickly pear fruits. Both designs resulted in simple and light tools with acceptable percentage levels of damage and speed of harvesting. Both tools showned performances superior to those of direct manual harvesting.